As you may remember from one of our earlier posts, http://runningbrothers.com/1057/mystery-challenge-2/, I established a Mystery Challenge for my brother, Rocky. Unfortunately, a huge golf tournament, the Richard McKinnon 5th Annual Golf Tournament took place on the day that I had originally planned for our Mystery Challenge #2.

The new date is set for June 26 and barring any setbacks, the Mystery Challenge for my brother, Rocky will commence. Rocky, be prepared because in 25 days my Mystery Challenge will have you testing the limits of what you thought was possible.

Anyone who is interested in participating in the Mystery Challenge is more than welcome to join us. If you are interested in finding out more information about the Mystery Challenge leave a comment on our page and I will inform you about what it will entail.

Running = 21 miles
Biking = 72 miles
Swimming = 5000 M or 3 miles
Total Amount: 96 miles

Overall Amount:

Running = 320 miles (95 miles to San Francisco)
Biking = 1,052 miles (1,718 miles to New York)
Swimming = 81,200 meters or 46.7 miles (61 miles to San Diego)
Total = 1,329 miles (1,441 miles to New York)

Running = 20 miles
Biking = 70 miles
Swimming = 4000 M or 2.5 miles
Total Amount: 92.5 miles

Overall Amount:

Running = 298.5 miles (116.5 miles to San Francisco)
Biking = 980 miles (1,790 miles to New York)
Swimming = 77,200 meters or 49.2 miles (61 miles to San Diego)
Total = 1,329 miles (1,441 miles to New York)

Rocky issued me the first mystery challenge several months ago. I had no idea what to expect and when my brother showed up on Super Bowl Sunday at some ungodly hour in the morning he displayed our new Running Brothers t-shirt and told me that I would be running a half-marathon in a couple of hours.

With no preparation and never having ran a distance amounting to that much in my life, I thought I did pretty good under the circumstances. I completed my first half-marathon running the entire way and it was a really cool experience. My brother’s mystery challenge was a huge success and today, I am throwing down my mystery challenge for my brother.

The mystery challenge is set to take place on Sunday May 22, 2011. The date is negotiable, so Rocky, if you need to change the date, just let me know. Another great thing about this mystery challenge is that anyone who lives in Southern California is invited to participate. If you are interested in participating in Mystery Challenge #2 . . . a mystery for Rocky, call me or send us an email at runningbros@gmail.com and we can tell you what the mystery challenge is so that you can decide to participate in it with us.

The great thing about it is that if you don’t want to run, or bike, or swim, you don’t have to and you can still have a great time with The Running Brothers and friends.

In Part 1 of our interview with Peter Engwall, we learned about the man who lost nearly 150 pounds when he decided to change his life for the better. In Part 2, we are going to learn about Peter Engwall, the man he is today. Peter has “an amazing wife, and the best son in the entire world!” And loves coaching his sons baseball and football teams. He’s a Project Manager for a wireless telecommunications company in Seattle, Washington. His schedule is extremely busy, but Peter always makes time for his Ironman training. Peter remains extemely active and we asked him a variety of questions relating to his fitness goals and about his website, http://auggiesdad.sweat365.com/.

As you may recall, Peter began exercising in order to lose weight and quickly discovered that entering himself in endurance events would help him stay focused on the end result of losing weight. One summer, he decided to sign up for his first Sprint Triathalon. Four years later he is planning on completing his first Full Ironman in November. Peter has also set a variety of other goals. He wants to complete an Olympic Distance race in under three hours and plans on completing his first Full Ironman in the alotted 17 hours. Lastly, he wants to remain injury free.

Peter’s life has been filled with memorable experiences. He married his best friend. He witnessed the birth of his son. He was on the Oprah Show. He completed a sprint triathalon. He completed a half marathon. And he completed a half Ironman. As a beginning runner, I know what Peter means when he says that those are memorable moments. It’s about being able to complete something that once was impossible and being able to accomplish something like that makes anything seem possible.

Training allows you to “get away from it all,” Peter says. When in training, all your thoughts and worries get focused on your training and it allows you to clear your head. And for Peter, it has been a surprisingly social activity. He has met numerous people that he has trained and worked with, including our first hero, Mitch Roberts. Peter began training with Mitch because he recognized the fact that it was important to find people to train with that are smarter and people to train with that are faster. I’m not sure which category Mitch falls into, but my guess is that it’s not the smarter one (Just Kidding).

Lastly, Peter believes that every person should make someone else’s life just that much happier. He recommends that you change the life of someone else for the better. And I can honestly say that your story, your participation and becoming one of our heroes has changed our lives for the better.

The Integrious Project – Our cousin Beau has his own website devoted to making Integrious a word in the dictionary. Not only that, but he wants to have people think and act integriously. Read our article about The Integrious Project. http://runningbrothers.com/875/the-integrious-project/

I hustled my way over to the pool to perform my 200 Meter swim. And I had been practicing for months and really thought that I was going to demolish my swimming time from the year before. I jumped in the pool and immediately began to pass people, until I got behind some idiot who was doing the breast stroke.

Everyone was swimming at his pace and there was no way that I could get past the guy because his legs were continually spreading out like you would imagine a frog would in the pool of water. I kept trying to get past him and that really sapped my energy.

Zeb Race on the Base Swim

The pool that I had been training in was half the size of the pool that I competed in. I did not think it would make that much of a difference, but it did. Each lap felt so much longer than the laps I had been used to and when I sprinted the last 50 Meters in the pool, it just seemed like the end was never coming. But, eventually I made it, completed the swim and ran into my Dad, Mom, sister and Dusty. They congratulated me on a job well done, but man . . . was I tired.

Now, it was time to wait for my brother . . . who I had not seen since I pushed him at the beginning of the race.

I love to view comments made our posts in order to check out other blogs, one such comment sent me to a series of blogs called Sweat365. I asked one of these blogger, Mitch Roberts, about his affiliation with Sweat365 and how it works. According to Mitch, Sweat365 is a social networking blog used to log workouts and connect with other athletes.

Mitch typically uses Sweat 365 as a way to log all of his times, but occasionaly includes blog posts. He has made many friends through Sweat365 and actually has kept in contact with other athletes to help motivate each other.

On his website, mitchr.sweat365.com, Mitch uses several Side Bar Widgets, which can be found on the Dashbord. He uses Logbook 2 to record the distances for his workouts and a countdown timer set for Cour d’Alene where he plans on completing his next Ironman event. (Rocky, these look like really cool widgets, we should look into getting some for our page)

Sweat365 looks like a good way to meet others who like to run, bike and swim. If you plan on running, biking or swimming, it is worth looking into as it’s a community of like-minded individuals who will keep up on their workouts and try to motivate you to keep up on yours.